My New Curate

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I had missed her recently, but had been occupied with other thoughts
until the time came for the quarterly salaries of the teachers; and I
noticed in the returns from the principal teacher that Alice had been
absent the greater part of the time. This evening, after leaving Father
Letheby, I determined to call, unprepared to witness the little tragedy
that was before me--one of those little side-scenes in the great drama
of existence, which God turns suddenly to the front lest we should ever
mistake the fact that our little world is a stage, and that we have all
the denizens of the veiled eternities for our audience. Mrs. Moylan was
one of those beautiful Irish mothers, who, having passed through the
stress and storm of life, was moving calmly into the great sea of Death
and Eternity. She had one of those Irish faces that were so typical of
our race some years ago, and the intense resignation and patience of
which rivalled the sweet innocence of our little Irish children for the
admiration of such a keen and sympathetic observer as Dr. Newman. There
were a few wrinkles in the pallid cheeks, and one or two lines across
the white forehead, crowned with the clean white cap which our Irish
mothers wear. She looked, I thought, a little reproachfully at me as I
entered, but only welcomed me with that courteous reverence which makes
us priests so often humbled and ashamed. After a few words I inquired
for Alice.

"My poor child hasn't been well, your reverence. We were jealous that
you never asked for her."

I protested my utter ignorance of her illness, and inquired what was the
ailment.

"You can see yourself, your reverence," the poor mother said, silently
wiping away a tear. "But," she whispered, "don't pretend to see
anything. She feels it very much."

I passed into the little chamber and was making my apologies to the
poor child, when, in spite of her mother's warning, I started back,
shocked and horror-stricken.

"Good God," I could not help crying out, "what has happened to you, my
poor child?"

She smiled faintly, and then a tear rolled down the leprous cheek. Ay!
indeed! my poor little Madonna, my little child, whose beauty was such a
dream of Paradise, was changed. The large, lustrous eyes were untouched;
but the fair cheek was one hideous, leprous sore. The black, glossy hair
was now a few dirty wisps. The child, whose face and figure every one
turned around to look at a second time, was now a revolting mummy,
seamed and scarred by some terrible disease. I had presence of mind
enough to take up the thin, white hand; she picked the coverlet and said
nothing. Her heart was too full of her misery to utter a word. I could
only say:--

"My poor child! my poor child!"

I turned to the mother.

"This is too dreadful! What has happened?"

"Dreadful enough, your reverence," she cried; "but welcome be the will
of God!"

"But what has happened?" I cried.

Then I thought it would be a relief to the poor child's feelings to tell
me her own sad tale, so I said:--

"Never mind! Alice will tell me all herself. Now, my child, tell me
all."

She did, with all the humility and such gentle submission to God's
decree that I wept freely. It would appear that on the afternoon of that
November concert, Alice, like so many other girls, was very much
engrossed in her preparations for the evening. She had studied the
"Young Lady's Journal" and several other works of interest and
usefulness, and all day long was highly excited over her appearance.
Once, when she was particularly engaged at the looking-glass, she heard
some one fumbling at the half-door, as if anxious to come into the
kitchen. Angry at being disturbed, she burst from her room, and saw in
the framework of the door an awful sight. It was a poor woman, whose
face was completely eaten away by a dread disease called nasal polypus.
The nose was completely gone and the upper lip. The eyes stared out as
if from a death's-head. The poor creature begged for alms; but Alice,
flushed at the thought of her own beauty, and in a rage from being
called away from her glass, clapped her hands and shouted:--

"Well, you _are_ a beauty."

"Not so handsome as you, alanna," said the afflicted one. "There was
wance when, perhaps, I was. But your time may come. Mockin' is catchin'.
Mockin' is catchin'."

And with these words the woman strode away.

"I could not get the thought of my sin out of my head all that day,"
continued Alice; "her face was always coming before me, until at last I
gave up looking at the glass. But when the night came and we were all in
the concert-room, my vanity came back again, for I heard people whisper
as I was passing, and my foolish head was turned. Then, when it was all
over, and the girls broke into groups, and the people were all around, I
tried to attract more attention. And I had been reading of a trick in
the novels for making one's self more interesting by standing on tiptoe
and opening the eyes widely; and, God help me! I was practising this
foolishness, thinking that some of the young men were admiring me for
it, when suddenly Father Letheby saw me, and he gave me a look that
struck me like a flash of lightning. I felt dazed and blinded, and asked
one of the girls to take me from the room and lead me home. But all that
night I never slept, the woman's face and the awful look that Father
Letheby gave me were staring at me out of the curtains and out of the
dark, until late in the morning I fell into a sleep, only to dream the
same dreadful things."

Here the poor girl broke down and sobbed in an agony of remorse.

"Well, then, Father, I got up sick and sorrowful, and before my
breakfast I went over there to the Blessed Virgin's altar and said a
Rosary, and begged and prayed her not to punish me for what I had done.
Sure, I said, 't was only a girl's foolishness and I was young; and I
promised then and there to give up novel-reading and to be good, and to
let my hair fall down, and to drop all my foolish notions; but 't was no
use. I saw something in the face of the Blessed Virgin that frightened
me, and I knew I was in for something. I didn't think my punishment
would be so dreadful."

Here the poor child sobbed again, and picked the coverlet mournfully as
she tried to choke down her emotion. I looked over at that statue of the
Blessed Virgin and shook my head reproachfully.

"Oh! Father, why does God punish us so terribly for such small sins?"
the poor girl went on. "And what must purgatory be, and what must hell
be when He punishes us so dreadfully here! I thought 't was all over and
my fear was vanishing, when one Sunday morning, dressing for Mass, I
noticed a tiny pimple here on my cheek. It wasn't as big as the head of
a pin; but it gave me great trouble. Not that I suspected anything; but
when our poor heads are turned with vanity, you don't know, Father, what
a worry these little blemishes are. I just touched it with my finger and
it bled. That night 't was an angry spot. I used everything I could
think of--lard, and butter, and ointment. No use. Every day it grew and
grew and grew into an ugly sore. Then I wrote, as Miss Levis advised
me, to a London doctor, recommended in the journals; he sent me a
prescription--"

"For nothing?" I interjected.

"No, indeed, Father. Before I was done with him it cost me a pound. But
I applied his cosmetics and became daily worse. Then my mother spoke of
making rounds. But I wouldn't leave her. I went to the school every
day, but I saw the girls watching me. I heard them whisper to each
other, and sometimes I caught their words. They weren't kind. Then I
stopped away. One day, while I was sitting at the door knitting,
suddenly the sun was darkened, and there was the dreadful face of that
woman over me.

"'I'm asking charity for God's sake,' she said.

"I got up humbly and gave her bread and twopence. She looked at me
keenly and said: 'God save you, alanna, and purtect you from misfortune.
Sure, 't was only a hasty word you said. God save you and purtect you,
alanna!'

"Then the frightful anger of God coming down upon me suddenly flashed
upon me, and I flung aside my knitting and rushed into this room, and
cried and screamed, and bit the counterpane until I tore it in threads,
and shrieked:--

"'Don't! don't, O Lord; Oh, don't! don't!'

"And then I turned to the Blessed Virgin and said the little prayer
'Remember' that you taught us, Father; 'Remember;' and then I said:--

"'You won't let Him, Mother! you won't let Him! Didn't you say you
wouldn't let Him?'

"But the face stared down at me pitilessly, pitilessly. There was no
hope."

The poor child stopped again, and to relieve her from the pain of memory
I said:--

"But wasn't the doctor called in all this time? The doctor is very
clever, you know."

"Oh, he was, Father! And he was very kind. But he was very angry; and I
think, Father, he cursed when I told him about these London cosmetics.
And one day he asked mother a lot of queer questions about father and
grandfather; and then he said something about 'strumous' and
'hereditary;' and he has done me no good."

"Did Father Letheby call?" I asked.

"Oh, dear, yes, that was my only consolation. He calls twice a week,
sometimes three times; and he brought Miss Campion, and she comes every
day and reads for hours with me; and look at those violets and lilies of
the valley--'t was she brought them; and sometimes a strange gentleman
comes with her, and he sits down and talks and puts queer questions to
me--all about God, and what I do be doing, and what I do be thinking.
But since Father Letheby told me that there is something behind it all
that I don't understand, and that some day I will understand it, and see
it is all God's love and not His anger, I am quite resigned, Father, and
I do be saying all day: 'Thy Will be done! Thy Will be done.' But I
break down when I think of all I've gone through."

"Let me see," I said, as a light began to dawn upon me; "you are now
perfectly resigned, my poor child, are you not?"

"Oh! yes, Father; and really happy. Only for mother, who frets about me
so much, I wouldn't care to be well again. Sure, as Father Letheby
says, I don't know but that something dreadful was in store for me; and
that God, in His mercy, has just saved me."

"Quite right! quite right! my child. And tell me now,--this strange
gentleman,--has he ever asked you to pray for him?"

"He did, Father. And I didn't like it at first; but Father Letheby said
I should. And I have been saying a Rosary for him every day since. And
the last day he was here he asked me: 'Now, Alice, tell me the plain
truth. Are you glad this has happened you?' I hesitated for a moment,
then I looked at the Wounds of our Lord, and I said firmly: 'I am.' And
he said: 'Do you believe God will give you back your beauty, and make it
a hundred times greater in heaven for all you have suffered here?' And I
said confidently: 'I do.' 'Alice, my child, will you pray and pray
strongly for me?' I said: 'I will, sir.' And he went away looking happy.
But, you know, Father, these are my good times, when I feel resigned
and think God is using me for His own wise purposes; welcome be His Holy
Will! But I am sometimes bad, and I get unhappy and miserable, and I ask
myself: 'Why did God do it? Why did God do it?' And once I said to our
Blessed Lady, when she looked so cold and stern,--I said--"

"What did you say, dear?"

"I said: 'If Daddy Dan was here, he wouldn't let you do it.'"

And the poor child smiled at her own childishness and simplicity.

"But that's not all, Father. I have told no one but mother and you; but
I'm all one running sore down to my feet, and the doctor said something
about an operation the other day. Sure, you won't allow that, Daddy Dan,
will you?"

She was rolling one of the buttons in my sleeve round and round in her
thin fingers, and looking wistfully at me.

"No, my child, no operation! You have gone through too much for that.
But now cheer up, Alice, it will all come right. Some of these days you
will see how our dear Lord and His Holy Mother love you. Why, don't you
know, you little goose, that these are signs of your predestination?
Don't you remember all that you have learned about the saints, and how
they prayed to be afflicted?"

"I do, Daddy Dan."

"And don't you remember all about those holy women that were marked with
the wounds of our Divine Lord?"

"I do, Daddy Dan."

"Very well! Now you're one of them. The Lord has made you His own. Now,
good by. I'll come to see you every day in future. But pray! pray! pray!
won't you?"

"I will, Daddy Dan! Will you come to-morrow?"

* * * * *

This was all very well; but I was as cross as a bear with a sore head,
notwithstanding.

"Wisha, then, Mrs. Moylan," I said, as I was leaving the house, "aren't
you the mighty proud woman entirely, never to call in your parish
priest, nor send him word about your poor child! What are we coming to,
I wonder, when poor people are getting so much above themselves?"

"Well, then, I didn't like to be troubling your reverence. And sure, I
thought you knew all about it, and that Father Letheby told you."

"He didn't, then. You and he have kept it a great secret,--a great
secret entirely. Never mind. But tell me, is the poor child really
resigned?"

"Well, indeed she is, your reverence, excep' now and then, when the
whole thing comes back to her. In fact, she's less trouble than when she
was well. Then nothing could please her. She was always grumblin' about
her clothes, an' her food; and she was short and peevish. Now she is
pleased with everythin'. 'T is 'whatever you like, mother;' or ''t is too
good for me, mother;' or 'thank you kindly, mother,' until sometimes I
do be wishing that she had some of the old sperrit, and take me short in
her answers. But, sure, 't is all God's Blessed and Holy Will. Glory be
to His Holy Name!"

I went back through the village again and called upon Father Letheby. He
was just sitting down to dinner.

"I don't want to take away your appetite," I said, refusing the chair
which he proffered; "but I am for the first time genuinely angry with
you. I suppose you had your reasons for it; but you ought to know that a
parish priest has, by every law, natural and canonical, the right to
know about his sick or distressed poor people, and that a curate has no
right to be keeping these things a secret from him. Reticence and
secretiveness are excellent things in their way; but this too may be
overdone. I have just been down to Mrs. Moylan's to learn for the first
time that her child has been sick for nearly two months. You knew it and
you never told me. Now, I'll insist for the future that a sick-call book
shall be kept in the sacristy, and that the name of every patient, in
the parish shall be entered there. Good evening."

He flushed up, but said nothing.

I passed the chapel door and went in straight up to the altar of the
Blessed Virgin.

"Now," I said, "you've carried this entirely too far. Is this the return
I've got for all I've done for you for the past fifty years? Think of
all the Rosaries I said for you, all the Masses I offered for you, all
the May devotions I established for you, all the Brown Scapulars I gave
for you--all--all--and this is your return; and she your own child, that
I thought was so like you. 'Pon my word, I think I'll blow out that lamp
and never light it again."

The mild, brown eyes looked down on me calmly, and then that queer thing
called Conscience, that jumps up like a jack-in-the-box when you least
expect it, started at me and began:--

"What folly is this, Father Dan? Do you think you know more than God and
His Blessed Mother? Do you? Your head is so turned with heathen vanity
that you think you ought to get the reins of the universe into your
hands. Here's your classics, and your Spinoza, and your Cappadocians,
and your book-writing, and all your castles in the air, and your little
children lying on their sick-beds and you knowing nothing about it. Look
sharp, old man, your time is at hand, and think what the Judge may do
with you when His hand presses so tightly on His little children."

I sat down to my dinner, but couldn't touch a bit. It was a nice little
dinner, too,--a little roast chicken and a scrap of bacon and some nice
floury potatoes. No use. The thought of that child would come before me,
and her piteous cry: "Oh, don't, dear Lord, don't!" and, "Sure you won't
let Him, Mother; you said you wouldn't;" and with a great big lump in
my throat I pushed aside the plate and went over to the darkening
window.

After a time Hannah came in, looked at the dishes, and looked at me.

"Was there anything wrong with the chicken?" she said, thinking I was
reflecting on her cookery.

"No, Hannah, 't was all right; but I'm not in a humor for eating."

She was surprised. So was I. It was the first time for many years that I
bolted. Thank God, a good appetite and His Divine Grace have never
deserted me.

"I'm thinkin' you're in for somethin'," she said. "And no wondher! I
niver knew a man to timpt Providence like you. Will you have the hot
wather, as you ate nothin'?"

"Don't mind, Hannah. I'll have a cup of tea by and by."

I sat down to the fire, looking into all its glowing crevices and
crannies, thinking, thinking of many things. By and by, in came Father
Letheby. He was subdued and deferential, but evidently very much hurt at
my unaccustomed rudeness. He stood with his back to the fire, looking
down on me, and he said, in his best Sunday accent, smoothed and
ironed:--

"I confess, sir, I am still quite at a loss to understand your
rather--well--forcible remarks this evening. I can see, certainly, a
great deal of reason in your irritation; and I am not at all disposed to
contravene the principle that you have an indefeasible right to be
acquainted with the sorrows and trials of your parishioners; but pardon
me for saying it, I was only carrying out, perhaps too logically, your
own reiterated teaching."

"Look here," said I, "have you had your dinner?"

"Yes, sir," said he.

"Well, then, sit down, and have your coffee here. Touch that bell."

He sat down, and somehow this took a lot of the starch out of him.

"You were saying something," said I, "about my teaching. When did I ever
teach you to keep the most vital interests of these poor people a secret
from me?"

"Well," said he, balancing the sugar in his spoon over the cup, "if
there was one lesson more than another that was continually dinned into
my ears, it was: 'When a young man comes into a strange parish, he
must be all eyes and ears, but no tongue,' and I think you quoted some
grave authorities for that aphorism."

[Illustration: "Was there anything wrong with the chicken?"]

"Quite so," I replied. "I think it is a most wholesome advice. For there
never yet was a young man that was not disposed to think that he could
run a parish better than all the pastors that lived for generations
there. But did you understand me to say that we were never to talk over
and discuss parochial affairs?"

"Well, I confess," said he, "I did not. But you see, sir, your thoughts
were running in quite another channel. You were interested in the
classics and in literary matters."

"My conscience, my dear boy, has already made me aware of that, and in
somewhat more forcible and less polite language than you have used. Now,
I admit that I have been a surly old curmudgeon this afternoon, and I am
sorry for it; but hereafter, don't leave me in the dark any longer about
my parishioners. It seems to me that, if we dropped our occasional
uncharitableness about each other and our more occasional criticisms on
our superiors, and addressed ourselves to the work God gives us to do in
that limited circle He has drawn about us, it would be all the better."

"Well, sir, I quite agree with you. But I must say that for the few
months I have been here, I do not remember to have heard much
uncharitableness about our brethren from you."

There now! How can you be angry with a fellow like that? The black cloud
turned softly into gray, and the gray turned slowly round, and showed
only the silver lining.

CHAPTER XXI

THE FACTORY

Notwithstanding my gloomy forebodings, I find that Father Letheby has
eagerly grasped the idea of writing on the historical and philosophical
subjects I had suggested. Where he got books of reference I know not,
nor can I conjecture; but he has a silent way of accomplishing things
that would seem to a slow-moving mind like my own little short of a
miracle. When, therefore, one fine day in early April I strolled in to
see him (for that little tiff about the sick child has only cemented our
friendship), I gasped to see a huge pile of quarto manuscript paper in a
fair way to be soon well blackened, and by the side of his writing-table
several heavy, leather-lined folios, which a certain visitor described
as "just the kind of book you would take with you for a stroll by the
seashore, or your annual holiday at Lisdoonvarna."

"Hallo!" I cried; "so you're at it. I thought you had given it up."

"I'm in for it," he replied modestly, "for good or ill. You see, I
recognized some truth in what you said, and I determined to do a little
to take away our reproach."

"I must say you are a singularly acute and deep thinker to recognize my
far-seeing, almost Promethean wisdom; but to tell you the truth, I
haven't the faintest idea of what I said to you, except to recommend
you to do something for the spread of Catholic literature."

"Never mind, Father Dan," he replied, "the seed is sown; the die is
cast. I intend to scribble away now and to submit my manuscript to the
editor of some ecclesiastical journal. If he accepts it, well and good;
if he doesn't, no harm done. By the way, you must help me, by looking
over this translation of the funeral oration of St. Gregory Nazianzen on
St. Basil. I depend on your knowledge of Greek a great deal more than on
these garbled versions of Scotch or Oxford translators."

Isn't that a nice young man? What could I do but go over, then and
there, that famous panegyric, that has made the author as great as his
subject. At the end of his papers on the "Three Cappadocians," Father
Letheby intends to give in Greek, with English translation, passages
from their sermons and poems. A happy idea!

"Now, so far so good!" said Father Letheby, after this little
conference. "The metaphysical subject is more difficult to tackle,--a
fellow can be tripped up so easily; but we'll postpone that for the
present. Now here are three matters that concern us. I think Ormsby is
on the point of coming over. The prayers of the little children and of
that poor Dolores, Alice, have nearly pushed open the gates of the
Kingdom. At least, they're creaking on their hinges. Secondly, I'm
beginning to get afraid of that young girl. Under her awful cross she's
developing such sanctity as makes me nervous about guiding her any
longer. She is going up the eternal hills, and my spiritual sight cannot
follow. Thirdly, we open the shirt-factory on the 20th. I give you
timely warning, Father Dan, for you are to be chairman, and your speech
is to be the event of the occasion."

"Quite an anti-climax from the eternal hills," I said, noticing his
tendency to practical issues rather than to supernatural evolutions;
"but now, let us see. Are you sure of Ormsby?"

"Nearly so. I have left him severely alone--told him the matter
concerned himself altogether. He has given up reading and argumentation
of every kind. He says the _Veni Creator_ every day. But I think, under
Heaven, it is the patience and divine serenity of this poor child that
affect him most deeply."

"Then he isn't shocked at her appearance?"

"Oh, dear, yes! He cannot bear to look at her. He says it is more like
Oriental leprosy than anything he has seen in these countries. But her
gentleness and patience and her realization of the unseen startle him--"

"It has startled me more than once," I replied.

"And me. I begin to feel almost nervous about directing so high a soul.
I am glad you have noticed it, because you can give me lights."

"H'm. You are becoming sarcastic, young man. But I feel we are treading
on holy ground. Let us look to ourselves. How often do you give the
child Holy Communion?"

"Every Sunday and holiday."

"Has she asked for more frequent Communion?"

"Yes, indeed; but I hesitated."

"Hesitate no longer. _Digitus Dei est hic_."

Of course, I had seen all this myself; for in a quiet, unconscious way
this poor child had manifested even to my purblind eyes the dealings of
God's munificence with her. By degrees all the old vain regrets after
her beauty had yielded to perfect resignation; and resignation had grown
into peace, and peace had been transformed into rapture.

"I used be thinking, Daddy Dan, a good deal of what you said to me--how
these poor bodies of ours were but a little lime, and phosphorus, and
water; and that we must all go through the terrible changes of death;
and what you told me of that great saint in Spain and the dead queen;
but it was only when Father Letheby read to me about our Lord, 'a worm
and no man,' 'a leper and accursed by God and afflicted'; 'and one huge
sore from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet'--that I began
to think He had made me like Himself, welcome be His Will, and Holy be
His Name!"

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